Gunslinger Girl: Pied Rouge
by RJ Frazer
Summary: Giacomo Dante's deadly assault on Venice was a shot heard round the world - but so is the retaliation. The Agency dispatches its overseas-operations fratello to hunt his supporters in Algiers, bringing yet another war to a conflict-troubled city.
1. Chapter 1

**GUNSLINGER GIRL**

"_Pied-Rouge"_

_By_

_Robert Frazer_

_Based on characters created by "Wraith11"_

* * *

_When I think of others' misfortunes, I forget mine._

Algerian Proverb

* * *

"Hey, waiter! Just what do you call _this_?"

Basem blinked, uncomprehending, the suddenness of the interjection catching him flat-footed.

"I asked you a question! Or are you deaf as well as slovenly?"

They weren't alien words, but they were coming out of an alien mouth – the white European had snapped at him in perfect Arabic. It was like a slap whipping against Besem's cheek – before he could feel the stinging hurt it had taken a moment to process that it had even happened.

"What? I have no idea—" Basem narrowed his eyes and began guardedly, in Berber.

"And don't pretend not to understand me! That's compounding the insult, and _this_ is bad enough already." The European took his coffee cup up and banged it down on its dish, slopping the contents over the table.

Basem's eyes flicked open again, almost boggling in shock. _The European had spoken in Berber as well_.

His wide-open sight took in not just the European's angry glower fixing him, but the rest of the café surrounding him. There were a number of other customers – all white Europeans as well, tourists – and the noisy crash of crockery had caused them to look up from their own drinks and meals and turn towards the commotion... with emptily idle looks that could just as easily be stirred to horror or outrage once something was given to occupy their attention. Basem swore mentally and hurriedly composed himself.

"I'm terribly sorry, sir, I am a mere uncultured man and have not yet trained out my uncouth peasant tongue." Basem smoothly switched back to Arabic – he could guess what the angry man was so het up about but he wouldn't give him the satisfaction of crowing it to the other customers. "Is there a problem with your order?"

The European gazed at Basem coldly for a piercing moment, before tapping the rim of his coffee cup. "I will have a fresh cup. One that's not contaminated by your... effects." He replied, also in Arabic.

Inwardly Basem seethed at the impudence of the pallid sack of birdshit, but it boiled behind a veneer that shone with the glossy gleam of an endearing and convivial host. "Sir, I assure you that only the finest ingredients and most careful preparations go to my food and drink..."

"Liar! Do not the words of the Prophet say that '_Thou shalt not raise a false report; put not thine hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness?_' Just as well that a deceitful swine like you runs a filthy hovel like this!"

Basem's vision swam; his breath was choked in his throat; his heart thudded hammer-blows that almost knocked him over. He lurched forward, thinking to fall on and smash down the vile European and turn his soft white face raw and crimson for twisting Muhammad's holiness with his infidel spew, but instead found himself clearing away the coffee cup, wiping the spillage down with a cloth from his apron, and assuring his valued and respected customer that if everything was not to his satisfaction then he would be more than happy to provide him with another cup free of charge.

As soon as Basem turned away towards the café bar his eyes flared with incandescent rage. He had a good career. Rich Europeans who wanted a taste of 'culture' but whose delicate, effete, simpering constitutions could not bear the thriving bustle of a real city would come to his café on the very edge of the casbah for 'authentic Algerian cuisine'. Basem was always the welcoming and accommodating host to every new arrival, because he took great pleasure in overcharging them for effluent that he would not feed to a dog, redressing the European glut of unearned, idle wealth. In deference to the Prophet's exhortation to fairness and probity, though, Basem left a little extra in every plate to make up for the increased price – a gob of his spit, or the dirt on his left thumb. All the while he laughed at the contemptible, bleating stupidity of whites – only now one of them had seen through it all and spoiled the joke.

Basem debated whether to spit again in the new cup as he poured it out, but decided against it – as much as he hated conceding an inch of ground to the European he might choose to make an issue of it in French the next time, and he'd be left with a ruined business as well as ruined pride. He could already hear the fluttering snatches of breath as other customers whispered amongst each other – they might have not been able to understand Arabic but it would have been obvious just by looking what the argument was about. As he glanced around he could see that a few were looking at their plates critically, and one was leafing through a tourist's phrasebook intently, trying to understand what he'd just heard. Another stupid white – but this time, Basem took no pleasure in the fact. Whisperings – the tiny little cracks that could collapse the greatest edifice, the selfish, petty, cruel conspiring of apostates and traitors which saw his forebears being dragged out of their beds to be shot by white police and their bastard half-breed _pied-noir_ offspring during the great battle of the city. Fifty years ago and before his time, but as fresh as yesterday and as vivid as if he'd been there, cutting a new scar every time a white European smiled at him and wished him good-day as they left a tip.

Hatred curdled in the pit of Basem's stomach as he took the coffee over to the precious self-absorbed linguistic show-off, and placed it down in front of him carefully. "I hope that this is more to your satisfaction, sir." His one consolation was that the European seemed to have been motivated by another pointless, imbecilic white conceit - fairplay. If the European had shouted out in his own language he could have humiliated Basem openly before everyone, but strangely he had decided to speak in Arabic and limit his advantage. His loss – maybe the pompous white was more stupid than he imagined himself to be.

The European lifted the cup up from its dish, studied its rich chocolate-coloured surface, took a sip, played it over his tongue, swallowed with a noisy gulp, and nodded appreciatively.

"Excellent." He said in French, nodding his appreciative answer to the rest of the café. "That's great, thank you very much."

Basem choked back an anguished howl at the European's cutting magnanimity and stalked back towards the bar.

Jethro watched the waiter go. He could see muscles clenching and unclenching beneath the man's thin sleeves and shirt, as though a serpent was coiling underneath his skin - it was something of a dark marvel to see someone so afflicted with rage, the beast of malice knotting and choking his very organs. Briefly Jethro wondered if he should have been avoiding such stunning sights – the operation was about to commence and a performance could well have attracted undue attention to himself – but after four months of living out of the back of a car he didn't think that it was too unreasonable to expect to have a proper cup of coffee. He had already been very reasonable about accepting its poor quality even before taking the waiter's poor hygiene into account.

It was also something allowed him to practise his bluffing. Jethro couldn't speak Berber; entirely apart from the fact that the tongue of desert nomads didn't exactly have a Linguaphone CD in the bookshop, after English, French, Arabic, Russian, a smattering of Central Asian dialects – and Italian, now – there simply wasn't much space left in his head to fit in another language. However, he'd rehearsed a few set phrases, and it seemed that he was able to deploy them successfully – even though the speech hadn't been friendly, it was unfortunate that demonstrating some closer knowledge of Algeria didn't seem to provide any consolation to the aggrieved waiter.

The waiter in question was still behind the café bar, apparently washing some pots (at least Jethro had been able to inspire some good practise) but scouring them with a black look of sick fury rather than rubbing them with soap and water. As Jethro studied the bitter man he cast his mind back to one of his earliest interrogations, which had been not long after he had caught the eye of the SIS. It had been a Russian, a real Red who recited passages of Lenin and Marx as a priest would litanies of faith. But his religion had proven false – no miracles had enjoined the people in the splintered land of Afghanistan, no manna of the means of production had filled the bellies of people whose stomachs were rotted by vodka, and his idols had crumbled with the Berlin Wall. He had claimed that the only things that had sustained him in his desolation were his anger and outrage and desire for vengeance, the only things giving his life purpose and direction out of the wastelands. Across the table, Jethro had seen it differently. The man's hatred wasn't a symbiosis revitalising him with an influx of fresh energy – it was a parasite, an infestation draining him of his last dregs of self and vestiges of worth, and would leave him an empty husk before it had had its fill; any satisfaction that he had felt was just a numbing poison to dull the bite of its fangs. That wasn't just fine words and cant – the Russian had emerged from Afghanistan with medals and a pension, then lost a hand in Angola, then an eye in the Congo, then tried making bombs for the Continuity IRA and spent his last hours as a dribbling sack of flesh slumped in a Libyan SIS safehouse, before being dumped on the road for a hit-and-run accident to be arranged.

In his time in Algiers preparing the ground for Monty's run, Jethro had seen very much the same thing writ large, sunk into the city's very foundations. The other diners in the café, having already lost interest in the past diverting episode and returned back to their own conversations, were murmuring about how wonderfully exotic the Casbah looked; Jethro's own eye settled on a line of bullet holes drilled above a doorway – chipped and ragged, as though they had been shot through decades ago and since been incorporated into the very fabric of the building, eroding along with it. More than forty years had passed since the violent, bloody seizure through which Algeria had been wrenched from France; two generations had been raised singing new songs and saluting new flags, not even having known what had come before them, and their fathers who had had still had a long time to enjoy their victory. Despite that, though, Algiers' streets were fronts, and its districts control zones; its people were enjoined in a close community, but that was because their connections came from eyeing each other warily and their bonds were restricting ones of the threat of mutual violence. Algiers was a city not at peace but at ceasefire – every inhabitant was fighting a war, and only waiting to receive the order to advance to bloody contact.

In Algeria, the colonial power had not only withdrawn but been beaten, but while the citizens of the land could have distinguished their new state by gilding her with the splendour of the victory, they instead chose to brand her with the anguish of the struggle. It was a ugly, pugnacious attitude that a new nation born out of conflict could only be sustained by it – a consuming mutation cankering the soul.

Jethro's musing had lasted him until the end of his coffee cup. Taking a last drag from its dregs, he checked the time, left his payment, and made to leave. The cracks in the pavements of Algiers – and the holes in its walls – were where the parasites made their nests.

Now, they were going to fill one in, at least.

* * *

Khalil was ill at ease. For years now he had lived in tents, under borrowed roofs and in the lee of tumbledown walls – and, when the situation called for it, beneath floorboards and down ditches, too. The left hand should not know the right, and so had Khalil lived a half-life, moved through a twilight world, and known no-one save as a voice, speaking for another voice, through the grainy ghost of a radio. He never saw another being – they were pinched shut by the bead of his rifle's iron sight.

Yet here he was, both he and his bodyguard Bilal shifting and scratching uncomfortably in ill-tailored Western-style business suits, as much out of place as a room which combined a line of Arabic window-arches with a row of French shutters, and Bedouin wall-hangings and reed floors with black leather couches, electric light and a Japanese television at one end of the room.

He glanced around him, taking in the other six occupants of the room. All were clothed similarly to him, although they looked much relaxed and settled in their outfits – even the three leaders' own individual bodyguards lounged comfortably on the couches. Khalil twisted his mouth into a small frown and plucked at his sleeve irritably – it all seemed vaguely unseemly, as though indolent Western idleness could seep through their very style of dress.

"Sirs," he began, voicing the essential doubt that itched at him, "I beg your pardon but I do not see what part I have to play in your discussions – I am a transporter and fighter, not a financier or strategist..."

One of the senior figures, standing by the closed window-shutters and carrying a glass filled with something that Khalil couldn't tell was alcoholic or not, smiled indulgently and raised a finger as though a point had been made. "Ah, you see, that's _exactly_ the reason why you're here."

Another senior leaned forward in his seat, a stern look creasing his features. "Perhaps you can enlighten us then, Hakim," he began, his strongly affected Benghazi dialect immediately identifying him as a Libyan (and the rigid shoulders that followed the cut of his suit disturbingly precisely betrayed him as a military man), "the sooner this is done, the sooner we can be away before a CIA missile blows us all to Jannah."

Hakim leaned back against the archway and made a show of a theatrical yawn. "Maybe we _should_ wait, then," he drawled languorously, "as I wouldn't mind my ticket to Paradise being _pre-booked_."

Khalil heard Bilal make a sharp intake of breath beside him, and he was inclined to agree, his own gaze hardening. Seniority could confer some liberty, but now Hakim was now being rather _too _casual.

The pair were not alone in their sentiment – the Libyan's expression was nothing short of thunderous, and he was gathering a breath to shout before Hakim smoothly snatched the opportunity out of his mouth. "Calm yourself, Farag! The Prophet – peace be upon him – _did_ have a sense of _humour_, too. Here," he changed tack, pulling a remote control out of a pocket with his free hand, and levelling it at the television, "here's something that you'll _all_ like."

The screen flicked on with a brief static whine, and murmurs of interest rippled across the room. The television was cycling through photographs of the Italian city of Venice – that wondrous foundation of European artistry and magnificence, and one which, like Europe itself, was steadily sinking into ignoble oblivion as the waves lapped up and over it. The "City of Light" was descending into dusk as new powers of the Faithful were lifted up by the inexorable wheels of time and fortune...

...with a little greasing of the gears by terrorism.

The pictures changed to images of the Piazza San Marco. Saint Mark's Campanile shot up from the square, a heroic spire that proclaimed the city's identity in the same breath as its veneration of God – but now, it looked more like some rotted fang in a decrepit animal's mouth. A massive cavity was gouged out of its side, with smashed brick forming a ragged, mutilated edge to the grievous wound that had been dealt to the historic structure. The Piazza's pigeons pecked for gizzard-grit amongst the detritus scattered around the wrecked tower's base – much like vermin worrying a corpse.

Everyone present made appreciative noises.

"Are any of you familiar with the Padanian insurgency in Italy?" Hakim asked.

Khalil nodded. He didn't exactly have access to CNN and his main occupation was dispatching _jihadi _to Iraq and killing American sympathisers in Niger and Mali, but even so news of the dramatic and explosive battle in Venice had reached even his ears.

Hakim walked over to and tapped the television screen. "When Western soldiers still trod on our soil, Italy – limp, effete Italy – was seen as the 'soft underbelly' through which they could reach up to strike Germany. It will be the same for us, except our ambition is greater and the spoils are richer – _all of Europe_.

"Tell me, what is the chief obstacle to _dar al-Islam_?" Hakim put down his drink, and suddenly his earlier levity had vanished – it was as though a mask had dropped down over his face. "We are the Elect of God – so what prevents us from hanging every last American and British pig from the lamppost and minarets in Baghdad? Wiping out every last treasonable black in Darfur? Hounding every last stinking Jew into the sea, and reclaiming Jerusalem for Arabs?"

"NATO bombs and satellite imaging." The Libyan, Farag, muttered sourly.

"Sheikhs who would rather drill oil than fight infidels." The fourth senior piped up.

Hakim nodded towards the fourth man. "Bassam there is closer to mark." Hakim closed his eyes and released a long, stuttering sigh, as though he was expelling ill humour from his body. "Disunity.

"Disunity is why Allah's providence has not deemed us worthy of victory. Since the first days when the Shia in their jealousy had to cleave to their wretched, snivelling Imams, it has hobbled us. Islam is _submission_ – the final word of Allah, the _ultimate _teaching, the revelation of the world as it _should be_. The Prophet – peace be upon him – showed us the way by which Man and God could be reconciled; to deviate from it then is illogical, irrational. _Madness_.

"And yet, over a millennium later, we _still_ have not run the Pope from his palace, and we are _still_ not reciting sutras in cathedrals, and we have _still _have not rendered the Jew down into the slavery that his miserable subhuman kind is only worthy of – because we, all of us at every compass point from Mecca, still fail to embody Allah's will in totality, and so we do not have his bounty.

"Israel could have been smashed and burned decades ago, but Hussein of Jordan valued his tinpot throne more, and repressed the Palestinians in his country. The blinkered Shi'ites of Iran blindly assailed Iraq, weakening Saddam for when he was challenged by the West—"

Khalil coughed pointedly. He was looking at the coppery fluid in the glass that Hakim had left by the side of the television, which he was now pretty sure contained whiskey. Will of Allah, indeed. So much cant from a hypocrite with a varnished tongue. Fine, true words, certainly, but Hakim was unworthy to speak them. "Hakim, I have absolutely no interest in whipping myself with past shame of forgotten defeats. Leave that to Christian flagellants and Western liberal guilt-junkies – I prefer to inflict suffering on my enemies rather than myself. Is there a _point_ to this pontification?"

A shadow passed over Hakim's face, visibly irritated at Khalil's interjection, which had interrupted him in full grand flow. It passed quickly, though, and a sunny disposition beamed after it. "Of course, Khalil. The purpose is to establish that disunity is a severe matter. Yet the Padanians in Italy provide us with an _opportunity _to make good on this" – he turned back to the television – "for just as disunity has inhibited us, so shall it undermine _them_.

"The Venetian battle here was achieved thanks to the enterprise of our Libyan comrades." He nodded in acknowledgement to Farag. "In supplying arms to the Padanians – and nothing so trite as AK-47s, but powerful missiles and miniguns – they have already struck a great blow, a shot heard round the world. The potential remains, though, to do _even more_, and to evolve this into a pan-Arab campaign of proxy insurrection. With Farag's governmental and industrial connections, Bassam's contacts with our brothers across the sea, Khalil's knowledge of trafficking and, _aha_, my money, we can strengthen the Padanians from a mob of provincial sectarians into a formidable guerrilla army... a _self-_destructive force which will break open Europe without the spilling of a drop of Arab blood. Maybe even the foundation campaign of the Great Maghreb Sultanate, forged in the pride of defeating the unassailable West...?"

Hakim let the question hang in the air, the thought a juicy bait to tempt the appetites of the others in the room.

Farag nosed it, but turned away, failing to be hooked. "Before we embark on any _grand adventures_," he began, his voice laden with sarcasm, "you still haven't given me reliable assurance that this location is safe. Before I divulge or discuss any information I need a guarantee of complete confidentiality..."

Hakim laughed lightly. "You really are a sourpuss today aren't you, Farag? As I said earlier..."

As Hakim and the Libyan bickered – a very promising start to restoring pan-Arab unity, that – Khalil's attention wandered back over the television. It was still mutely cycling through an automated slideshow of images of the fight in Venice, but what was more interesting was that it had moved from generic news-footage of the ruined Campanile to grainy but visible images of the battle itself, presumably taken by hidden cameras that had been secreted amongst the buildings fronting the Piazza, or maybe by an enterprising paparazzo who had squeezed through the police cordon – if only it had been a brother!

Whatever the source, though, they were indeed a vivid and potent exhibition of just what Libyan support had enabled the Padanians to accomplish. During his own _jihad_ Khalil had seen numerous firefights, but they had been ragged, scrappy skirmishes with clunky, ageing weapons, and more often than not he had to corral 'warriors' whose only talent was boasting and who judged vigour by the din of flailing full-auto spray. It was strangely baffling to see a gunfight conducted where every movement was gauged and every shot was aimed, where the combatants fought with might (and not machismo) in a geometric battle of military precision... and _destruction_, as the Padanians deployed hardware that rent blazing gashes of fire through lines of black-suited soldiers...

..._and young girls_?

Khalil blinked, not believing his eyes, and peered closely at the screen, before his eyes widened again to take in everything about the remarkable sight. As ludicrous as it seemed, they stood there, plain as day – burly, hulking operatives being led by a slight adolescent with a skirt and flowing auburn tresses; a shock of twisting gold streaked up the side of the campanile with the speed of angel ascending to heaven; and when the warhead crashed through the Campanile belfry, a girl was caught by the breaking masonry and tumbled along with it...

...she had a strange pose. It was obviously impossible, but it still looked for all the world as though she'd been _carrying_ the missile.

Khalil glanced around the room worriedly, seeing if anyone else had registered just what had passed before the screen. Was he the 'junior member' of this partnership? Did they know something that he did not? Khalil had no high opinion of Europeans, but even so he couldn't deny that child soldiers belonged more in West Africa than West Europe. Khalil turned towards Bilal, and could see similar consternation deepening his expression too.

Something... _unnatural _was suggested by those pictures. As a guerrilla and a terrorist, Khalil prided himself on being part of a secret war, of being favoured with knowledge and insight of conspiracy and intrigue beyond the scope of common folk, seeing the mechanisms of machination that really operated the world behind the facades of normality. Here, though, Khalil had the creeping, disquieting sensation that somehow the joke was now on him.

"—don't forget that we're in the _Casbah_," Hakim droned on, "and it is not a city district, but an integral fortress writ large. The narrow alleys will stymie any advance on us at ground level, and the rooftops of this and all of the surrounding buildings are covered by my fighters. It matters not whether the threat comes from above or below – we're invincible."

* * *

(Continued)


	2. Chapter 2

For an hour under the beating midday sun, those self-same narrow alleys of the Casbah stopped being cool shady veins between the tall buildings, and were inflamed into blazing, surging, fiery rivers of heat. Stall vendors put up awnings to shield them and their customers from the glare, but that only trapped the warm air and made the atmosphere close and muggy and suffocating. Most people would be indoors, waiting for the spate to abate, but those whose business meant that they had to be out and about just had to wade through the stifling, sweaty soup and console themselves that it was will of Allah to send his people trials.

Sometimes, it was also the will of Allah to send his people relief, as a reward for their faithfulness. One would be shuffling along, his soles burning from the heat of the paving-stones underfoot, when a breath of wind would kiss his brow, and a flutter of a shadow would give momentary relief to his stinging, squinting eyes. He would raise his head to give thanks for that mark of favour, but the angel who imparted the gift would already be gone.

Monty sprinted on air. Tightrope walkers were also-rans with an entire cable to support them – Monty danced on the slightest threads, giving each sill and crack and gutter, each indentation between bricks, each toe-hold and nail-grip the barest brush, as insubstantial and fleeting as something borne by the wind.

It wasn't anything so facile as flight. Flight was an easy, lazy thing, languidly gliding on soothing thermals, but as Monty bounded and twisted between walls people flashed underneath her as a churning blur of colour which foamed and spumed like a torrent that would dash her to pieces should she fall into it. Every step had to be exactly placed, every muscle tensed to propel the correct force, but in order to maintain her momentum from bound to bound there was no opportunity to rest and consider each move; adrenalin burned in her limbs hotter than any oil. It was a hurtling, bombing course, a horizontal free-fall... and there was nothing more exhilarating.

Someone – even though this memory was clearly imprinted, she still could not for the life of her remember who – had laughed at her for this, calling it a conceit, a self-important inflation of what could charitably be called vandalism and trespass. Freerunning wasn't athletic skill, it wasn't gymnastic poise, it wasn't piercing observation and it certainly wasn't flight. It was falling, one drawn-out tripping stumble that might flap and flail some distance in a desperate, drunken attempt to regain balance, but would only end with a smack into the ground.

Again, Monty couldn't explain why – she was confident enough in herself to usually be able to laugh off such petty, small-minded griping – but those particular words at that particular time from that particular person had hurt her, with an ache reached into her soul. A pain that deep could only be soothed by a spiritual salve – Monty took consolation from the thought that falling on her feet so often was a miracle from God.

Always cresting an arc, the shining Bailey's Bead of a solar corona.

Always one step from Heaven.

Monty braked in a skipping, skidding streak along a ledge before finally coming to rest against a building's cornice. At her speed, anyone else would have snapped his wrists or dislocated his shoulder, but with her enhanced cyborg physiology it was of no more consequence to Monty than a bruise.

Thirty feet beneath her an old man snoozed his siesta in a porch. Thirty feet above her a hired gun's gaze swam through the sweat dripping into his eyes and the heat-haze fuming off of the buildings as he scanned the surrounding rooftops. Thirty feet across from her, hooking around the corner, was a row of Arab window-arches, with a line of closed French shutters.

Hakim and his cohorts were safe from above and below, perhaps – but not between.

* * *

Bassam heard a whiplash-crack of splintering wood. Instinctively his head turned to the sound, and he saw a neat, round hole punched through one of the shutters, and then the small, round grenade that the light from the hole framed like a halo, frozen in an instant of flight, and then his life ended in a flash.

Farag heard a whiplash-crack of splintering wood. His experience as a soldier immediately processed it as a gunshot and he flung himself forward onto the floor, going prone underneath the bullets that would be raking through the windows. It only presented an uninterrupted facing to the grenade, and shrapnel from the blast shredded every inch of his body.

Hakim heard a whiplash-crack of splintering wood. His bodyguard jumped into his view of the room, his form... _streaking _as it was buffeted by the blizzard of whirling metal, before the hammerblow of a concussive wave picked up the ragged doll and flung it against Hakim, slamming them both into the wall with a winding impact. As the remains of Hakim's bodyguard slithered down his front, a pistoning fist punched out of the smoke and _through _Hakim's chest, pinning him there for later collection.

Khalil heard a whiplash-crack of splintering wood. The world suddenly corkscrewed around him as Bilal flipped his commander over the back of the couch, and then a wave of hot gore and scathing gristle swept over him as Bilal followed, in a different way. The sting of the heat spurring him to action, Khalil immediately pounced back over the crumbling couch, his throat clenched shut in a tight scream of soundless rage and tugging his pistol from his accursed impractical jacket. He was confronted by a demon, a black shadow, a cinder burnt to the colour of death by the unbearable light flaring around it from the smashed shutters that the messenger had descended through.

A flashing roundhouse-kick swept the bones in Khalil's hand to powder and sent his pistol sliding into the slaughter – then it flicked upward, caught him under the chin and snapped his neck clean back. The last thing Khalil saw before he died was a ceiling stained with blood-spray, and he could not see Jannah through the gashes that the grenade had torn in it.

* * *

Monty had barely exhaled when the doors to the room fell open – damaged by the grenade, and finally done in by a heavy shove – and two guards wielding automatic rifles burst into the room. They didn't come in firing for fear of hitting their comrades, and what prevented them from letting rip once they saw the fatal carnage was Monty holding up Hakim before them. Drenched in gore from top to toe and with a gaping cavity gouged out of his chest, it was immediately obvious to the guards that their commander was dead – but that moment's hesitation whilst they assimilated the fact was all that Monty needed.

Two hard, sharp reports barked out from her pistol. The two guards slumped down, twisting weirdly gracefully as the bullets flashed through their necks and neatly severed their spinal cords. The room had been defaced by enough butchery – there was barely a spoonful of blood spilt between the two new corpses.

Throwing down the soft, glozing sack of Hakim's body, Monty looked through the open doorway. A long, finely-decorated corridor stretched beyond it – Monty could not espy any reinforcements arriving, but by flicking her head and manually fine-tuning her sensitive ears she could hear feet shuffling about – setting themselves in concealment around a landing, preparing to catch the assassin in crossfire when he sought escape, rather than blindly funnelling themselves into a shooting gallery. The late Hakim had ably trained a professional outfit... not that it would do them any good.

Monty unclipped her second grenade from her webbing-belt and pitched it down the entire length of the corridor almost at a rate of a bullet itself. A dull, muffled thud was followed by a shrill, distended scream – sufficient to keep their heads down long enough for Monty to rearrange the faces of her victims into adequate consistency for identifying photographs from her mini-camera. Peculiarly, though, even though pretty much the entire Janes' catalogue had been taught to her under hypnosis, the rifles that the guards had been carrying were a strange, novel configuration that she could not recognise.

That was an interesting titbit that she could chew on in the debriefing. Her main task completed, Monty holstered her pistol and slipped her camera back into its side-pouch, before splashing across the floor (she frowned at that – it would wreak havoc with her shoes' grip) back to the shutter that she had jumped through...

...and into a hailstorm of lead.

Chattering fire from two weapons on the rooftop of the building across the gap slashed the air around her, chipped away at the window-arch and cut into her body. Having already shifted into combat mode, though, pain-suppressing memes were already baffling Monty's brain and she did not even feel the impacts except as matter-of-fact registries of structural damage in her subconscious. She focused on the wall in front of her, her mind whirling with computer-speed to trace a route that would bear her weight from loose brick to roof-edge, and she cleared the gap with a hop before skittering up the wall like a scalded spider.

Ahmed leaned forward over the roof edge as he rammed a fresh magazine home. He had seen the assailant vanish from the window – had he fallen back inside or down into the street? The heady tang of cordite swept up into his brain and brought a smile across his face – barely a minute had passed since the first blast, and if the attacker was leaving so quickly he must have been driven out and thwarted. There'd be bonuses in this!

Ahmed only realised that he was no longer holding his assault rifle as someone tumbled him over the precipice and down to a flesh-pulping five-storey drop.

As Monty adjusted her grip on her new acquisition – a common FN FAL, this time – the other roof guard tried to swing his own weapon round to bear, his eyes goggling in frantic panic. There was no half-second breathing-space necessary for finesse this time, so Monty put the rifle against her shoulder and, her cybernetic body holding her rigid, gave her adversary the entire magazine.

Hakim had equipped both his men and his mercenaries well, and the roof guard was protected by stout body armour that fully resisted ten shots.

The other twenty ripped through it and puréed his torso.

Monty threw down her spent weapon, but no sooner had she done so than the zing and sting of further incoming fire buzzed around her from the target building that she had just departed. Her sensitive hearing could almost mentally trace the paths of the bullets creasing the air around her – too well, in fact, as their rapid passage whipping past Monty spun her whirling moment of dizzying vertigo, leaving her addled and allowing a bullet to solidly bury itself in the meat of her arm.

Jolted back to awareness by the impact, Monty bit back a curse – _Merde! _Careless! Damn careless! – and scooped up the rifle of the man she had just killed. Squirting off a moderate burst back at the other rooftop as she rose, she was surprised to see the roof guards clustering the building already in the process of diving for cover. She might be flattered, but she knew that she wasn't _that_ imposing.

A bang of a slamming door behind her alerted her to the reason. "_Police! Halt! On the ground! Now!_"

There was a high-pitched edge to the voice which betrayed the speaker's terror, but pre-programmed rules of engagement rang stridently in Monty's head – _except where specifically ordered by your handler, figures of official public authority are not to be harmed. _Not even turning to inspect who had arrived, Monty snapped like elastic into a sprint towards the building edge. The next building along directly abutted the one on which she was standing and broken glass had been cemented to the edge in order to discourage trespassers – Monty ran through it with barely a grunt, while the policemen trying to mount chase backed off with curses of impotent frustration. More police were erupting onto every rooftop in sight, but Monty had already slid down a drainpipe to pad into the warren of the Casbah – safe from above and below.

* * *

Jethro, trundling along a road at the edge of the Casbah in a plain, unassuming grey Audi estate, driving a fair amount below the speed limit, quietly glanced at the dashboard clock. Nodding to himself, he pulled a switch which released the catch of the rear left door. It clicked shut again.

Jethro immediately whipped round to face the rear seats—

--and discovered that the pistol he would have been pointing there was no longer in his right hand, and instead was facing _him_.

"Take this plane straight to Luton!" Monty smiled.

Jethro flashed a toothy grin at his cyborg, before turning back to the road and smoothly accelerating to the speed limit. "There's a change at Stansted for Cuba, if you like."

With a yowl of straining, tortured revs, two police vans accelerated past the fratello's Audi and zoomed onwards, sirens blaring.

"I suppose it makes them feel important." Monty grunted.

"What are the scores for 'Day Five' anyway, Monty?" Jethro asked as he turned onto a motorway leading out of Algiers.

"After four overs, it's forty-one for six. I expended two grenades and two pistol rounds. Confirmed kills on four V.I.P.s and eight heavies - at least one more possible." Monty gasped.

"For _six_...?" Jethro furrowed his brow in consternation and glanced at Monty in the rear-view mirror. "God, Monty, you're _hit!_"

"Hoi! Eyes on the road, buddy, or have you up before a harassment tribunal when we're back in Italy!" Monty was stripping off her shirt, now stained with patches of rust-coloured dry blood. "Pity," she mused, "I liked this one.

"Three bullets to the chest, one to the abdomen and one to the arm," she changed tack to satisfy Jethro's worried expression reflected in the windscreen, "plus there's still some glass left in my foot. They're all only moderate flesh wounds, we can paint them shut with the spray and I don't feel as though it'll adversely affect my performance."

"If you want me up before a judge, Monty, two can play at that game, and I can follow correct procedure and give your performance review to the tender mercies of external examiners. I don't doubt that Leon and Adriano would have much to comment about." Jethro smiled at Monty's strangled cry. His genuine relief at her relatively light damage from a dangerous operation allowed him to relax into his usual banter - Monty's tart defiance would be completely alien to most other cyborgs, particularly the young ones, but from his years observing people Jethro understood that changing moods were an important barometer of someone's wellbeing.

Monty had lifted up the seat beside her and was rooting through the med-kit in the storage space beneath it for a synskin canister as she spoke. "Anyway, Giacomo Dante will find it difficult now to top his little exhibition in Venice – now that we've renegotiated more favourable contracts with several of his arms contacts, he'll be down to rocks and bad language by summer."

_Touch plastic_, Jethro thought to himself, tapping the steering wheel as a charm. His own father had lost his legs to an IRA mortar-bomb literally the day before the Ulster ceasefire – he admired Monty's simple innocence, but from his experience the world was anything but simple.

"Well, that calls for a celebration." Jethro brightened his expression. "Victory parade?"

"You might as well" Monty replied, affecting a dismissive manner. "It'll cover up the air conditioning; the drone's getting on my nerves."

Jethro tapped a button on the dashboard, and music sounded through the cabin.

_"You're everywhere and nowhere, baby,_

_That's where you're at_

_Going down the bumpy hillside in your hippie hat_

_Flying across the country and getting fat_

_Saying everything is groovy_

_when your tires are flat"_

As the voices swelled to the chorus, Jethro and Monty added their own backing, singing out,

_"And it's hi-ho silver lining_

_Anywhere you go now, baby_

_I see your sun is shining but I will make a fuss"_

Shirtless or not, Jethro turned back to Monty, and the fratello smiled at each other happily.

_"Though it's obvious!"_

* * *

**THE END.**


End file.
